Tour

"Look out, Europe--we're going on tour."

-- "Springtime for Hitler," The Producers

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Had a blast in KY with Tory after a dazzling (brass and velvet) symphony on Friday night, an obscure Tchaikovski march and two Rachmaninoffs, the first of which blew me right out of my bouncy-cushioned seat. The Music Hall downtown is about as shiek as an arts building can get without being considered vulgar by the martinis and wine glasses who frequent its concerts, and little did I know, but I chose to come on the opening night of their season. In my ratty sports coat and casual Polo shoes, I felt scuzzy and small sitting next to a man in a tux.

Lexington, KY, is gorgeous. The campus library at UK is magnificent and huge, with a wide quad before it like a satellite dish of grass, and even though we only had five minutes to take in the beauty of this house of books (Tory gets to study there, lucky lucky), it was definitely a highlight. That, plus Strongbows into the wee hours after salads at a tiki place downtown, made the whole weekend a highlight, a nugget in radioactive gold at the bottom of what has so far been a kind of drab Cincinnati experience.

Storms and trips, man, friends and winds: Lightning bolts for life.

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The wind blew my hangover away on Sunday. These gusts were left over from big ol' Ike, cruising his way along the Ohio, chewing up the landscape. While Tory and I dealt with crosswinds on a crosswalk (the Indian buffet has nonstop nan), the selfsame storm was tearing down trees, scaring children, and knocking out power for the greater Cincinnati area, killing four people. So it goes.

We had power again about three hours after I returned. I was asleep when it happened, but when a house of women squeals and lights go on, you wake up.

We lost power again today around noon. I was halfway through making a delicious lunch (shredded chicken in a curry-broccoli-tomato-cabbage mix, padded with rice and stolen spaghetti noodles) when there was a housewide tick!, and it seemed that the world had maybe rolled to a stop.

It didn't, though.

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Today we opened our season. The show went well, as shows tend to do, and the kids were quiet but attentive, and their questions poured forth like rain. It was the satisfying awe at what we do that we had craved for weeks, and it was enough. My hope is that it continues to be enough.

We had a thirty-five-minute load-out, which is not bad for children's theatre standards. Techies and roadies could maybe do it quicker, but add costumes and bona fide actor ineptitude, and you may need to grab a Snickers. I'll be keeping track of times and crowds, morale and hiccups, as the tour's road manager (I like my grapes peeled, please), the daily audits of hokey-dokey theatre. I don't mind. As a geek among geeks, I dig a dose of digits every now and again.

Day off tomorrow. Hope the skies stay blue.